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Husband. Father. Eagle Scout. Dir. of Sales & Marketing for The Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island. My interests include travel, social media, and hospitality. I'm also fond of tacos, college football and beach bars. All opinions expressed are my own.

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1Password jumps the shark

For me and many other Mac users, 1Password is the ideal application. I essentially remember — wait for it — one password… ever. The app takes care of creating secure passwords for every website I visit and remembering them. They even have a companion app for iPhone/iPod that allows me to browse with my passwords when I'm mobile. There's even a secure wallet feature for online purchases. I bought 1Password last year and I've used it every single day without fail. It is, without question, the premiere password creation/logging app available today.

And that's where our story takes a sad turn.
Recently the guys at Agile Web Solutions, the makers of 1Password, have rather sadly chosen to pursue the abandon the installed user base in favor of future profits.

Case in point, the user base has turned to Twitter, Facebook, and even the company's own user forums to request that 1Password enable support for Google Chrome/Chromium browsers. 1Password's response? Not right now, we're busy working to make more money off of you with this future upgrade.

Quite a shame to see a good company with a great product put its own interests ahead of the users. For those keeping score, 1Password has jumped the shark.

8 thoughts on “1Password jumps the shark”

Hi Kevin, thanks for your post. I'm really sorry to hear that our response about Chrome conveyed "we're busy working to make more money off you" and not the truth, which is that we've looked at an application that is only at the developer preview stage of its development on the Mac and determined it's not technically possible to properly support Chrome at this time. The Chromium team are still working on browser extensions support for the Mac:http://agile.ws/s/3e7ce1846

[the link is to a message posted on the Chromium-extensions Google group]

We've never been about making a buck off our customers, and I hope our track record proves that. I'm sorry you're disappointed, but I hope that helps explain where we're coming from. If anyone's got any more feedback for us, we're always around.

@1passsword – I've read & re-read this thread multiple times and I can't find any instance where technical issues surrounding Chrome/Chromium extensions was raised prior to your reply. On the other hand, I can find multiple instances in this thread of the AWS team saying that the focus is only on the new release.

The link you provided is an announcement made on Nov 11, 2009. The AWS team's position of not attempting Chrome/Chromium support dates back to May 2009. I understand from the link that there may be some technical delays for Mac extension support during the next 30 days, but that really doesn't speak the AWS position in the previous six months, in my opinion.

Perhaps I care to much, but it sure would be nice to feel the way I used to feel about 1P.

I can see your point of view Kevin, and I appreciate you helping us set the priorities for the next release. We have had a lot of requests for Chrome lately, and it has quickly bubbled up into our top 5 list of new features to add.

To give you some additional perspective on timing, consider how hard it is to develop for a moving target. Given our small team size, it made a lot of sense to wait for Chrome to solidify before diving in, instead of developing and re-developing a 1Password extension. The link to the google groups discussion was not intended to say its impossible, but rather to point out that things are still changing very quickly, and that this is (and will continue to) slow us down. Once Chrome actually enters Beta, things should be solidified. The fact Chrome is not solidified yet, combined with the fact that 1Password 3 adds full support for Snow Leopard, you can see why we want to get 1Password 3 out the door first.

With that said, developing an extension for a new browser is a lot of fun and it's been hard to resist doing so. In fact Roustem has spent a lot of time on Chrome support over the last week and has made a lot of progress.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that we actively listen to all our users and over the last year many suggestions were implemented into 1Password 3. We are already looking for features for a 3.x update, and we are aiming to add Chrome support there.

Now, about those upgrades 🙂 We've given out over 100 free upgrades to 1Password over the years (1Password 3 is our first paid upgrade in over 3 years), and the 3.x updates will be free as well for 1Password 3 license holders. These updates are often significant, adding new features such as additional browser support, and some other goodies we have planned. I hope that helps change your perspective about us putting our own interests before our users.

I want chrome support to, but I totally understand Agile's reasons for not yet developing for it. It's a pre-release buggy piece of software and isn't even feature complete in and of itself.

It's a bit harsh to say that it has jumped the shark. Once 1password sends and receives email, I'll agree – it has jumped the shark. Not supporting a browser that is in developer preview seems okay to me.

I felt a bit bullied into upgrading to 1Password 3 since I wanted to keep my OS current and run Leopard and they never patched 1Password 2 for Snow Leopard support. That said I was given 1Password 2 for free by a friend who'd received free passes from Agile… and the upgrade fee was just $19.99 for what has become a must-have app for me. So I'd be a cheap bastard to not pay for the upgrade.

I've lately switched to using the Chrome browser. Even in beta-form it has sucked me in. Things like being able to use Command 1,2,3,4,5… to change tabs and the fact that you can hide the bookmark bar but it temporarily shows when you make a new tab, and the far superior thumbnail/history/start page over Safari's – have all worked to seal the deal on switching.

Which brings me to the inconvenience of Chrome lacking 1password support. I was googling for some sort of hacked on support when I found this blog entry. Kevin, I was struck by your reactionary attack on Agile. Seems pretty unreasonable to expect a company to support something still in beta. I've fiddled around with installing some windows Chrome extensions and although they do install in Mac OS X Chrome, they really don't work at all. As soon as they do, I'd imagine Agile or someone will have something available shortly.

That all said, I'd have thought there could be a bookmarklet solution for use with 1Password's new 1PasswordAnywhere. That could make for a nice backup solution to anyone using a browser without more integrated support.

I have no link to the developers at all, but I must say that this "how dare they focus on making a buck" commentary is complete bullshat! OF COURSE they're trying to make money. Do you work for free?

Writing software isn't the same as writing an email. You don't just stop and change directions at a whim. And you certainly don't stop for a browser that may or may not even get released to the general public any time in the near future.

I realize that Chrome has recently been announced for beta release by the end of 2009, but that was not the case the last 9 or so months while they were working on 1P3.

I have no issue with Agile making a buck. (Heck, I gladly gave them mine!)

My expectation for Agile was that they were capable of contemporaneously supporting the installed base in 1P2 while moving forward with 1P3. Agile has added browser support between versions in the past, so why not now (especially with so many people asking for it)?

1password has been very supportive all this time and the developers seem to be one of the best in the industry.

The lack of support to Google Chrome seems fair since it is just a development preview (not finalized software). Putting time and effort in something that is likely to change while depriving all your user base hardly makes sense.